Those who visit my blog on a regular basis and those who already touched base with biestmilch know probably that biestmilch is a stress modulator and therefore a remedy in the most different diseases, occasions and conditions. Now, I just bumped into an article on the American Scientific’s website about the implications of stress on the immune system, a publication that cites two studies. Here is an excerpt.

Ohio State University psychologist Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and her partner, Ronald Glaser, an OSU virologist and immunologist, have spent 20-odd years researching how stress affects the immune system. They worked with caregivers for years, a job that definitely brings up a lot of stress situations.
In one experiment, Kiecolt-Glaser and her colleagues administered flu vaccines to caregivers and control subjects and compared the numbers of antibodies that the two groups produced in response. Only 38 percent of the caregivers produced what is considered an adequate antibody response compared to 66 percent of their relaxed counterparts, suggesting that the caregivers’ immune systems weren’t doing their jobs very well—and that the stress of caregiving ultimately put them at an increased risk of infection.

The immune system steers healing processes

This an essential aspect that athletes should pay attention to. Many of them who suffer from injuries, or undergo operations don’t take into consideration that an intact immune system is pivotal for recovery which is identical with healing. The two above named researchers were also able to demonstrate how stress affects the healing process. Immune responses are responsible for healing, Thus, if immunity is impaired, then it should also affect how well the body heals itself. In one particularly study the scientists afflicted a group of caregivers with small arm wounds using a tool dermatologists use to perform skin biopsies. The caregivers’ wounds took 24 percent longer to heal than wounds that they had afflicted to non-caregivers.

They performed yet another experiment in which they produced tiny lesions in the mouths of—quite appropriately—11 dental students at two different points in time. Once was during their summer vacation, when they were relaxed, and once was during the fall, several days before a difficult exam. The lesions done before the exam took from two to eight days longer to heal than the summer wounds. For some subjects, the exam wounds took nearly twice as long to get better.

In her most recent study, Kiecolt-Glaser found that when people are under lots of stress—for instance, when they are forced to deliver a speech or do difficult math problems on the spot—their allergies worsen over the course of the next day.

Stress and its regulation by the stress system (nervous system, immune system and hormones) is essential for our well-being. Stress are all stimuli that endanger our body’s balance. There is a lot more to say, if you feel for reading more then go to the American Scientific about Stress or to our Biest-Magazine.

Results of studies in sports science, exercise physiology or medical science are often controversial. A very good example is body temperature and heat stroke. I found an excellent argumentation on the sportscientist’s blog. It is recommended to all athletes who do believe so much in science and its methods. Take a look out of the box. The following is an excerpt of an article that fits perfectly well biestmilch’s philosophy and scientific approach.

Calvin (the young boy, for those who haven’t discovered Calvin and Hobbes) asks his father a seemingly simple question, and gets an absurd answer. Yet incredibly, this is how exercise scientists have approached certain problems for many years - fatigue and temperature is the most obvious of them! So we study what happens at failure (exhaustion) and then infer the cause backwards from there! For example, when studying fatigue, many exercise physiology studies make runners or cyclists exercise at a fixed workload until they are absolutely exhausted and then measure things at the point at which they stop, assuming them to be the cause.

Experience tells another story

Regardless of the air temperature, humidity and windspeed, your body temperature will regularly hit about 39 degrees celsius, with no ill effects whatsoever - it’s a controlled “hyperthermia”, and you’re halfway to heat stroke without ever even realising it! It’s actually amazing to consider how exercise makes the “abnormal” feel normal. Take a physiological snapshot of yourself during a 10-mile tempo run and your heart rate is 175 beats per minute, your breathing rate 54 breaths per minute, your body temperature is 39 degrees celsius. A doctor presented with those statistics would likely admit you to an ICU, yet you feel absolutely perfect during exercise!

How you feel is not necessarily the same as how you are are.

A similar concept applies to exercise. And the point of all this is to introduce the issue of heatstroke to you. Your body is a remarkably designed machine, capable of losing far more heat than you might realise. Yet it chooses to allow you to gain heat and you become “hyperthermic” during exercise even on cold days.

Whole article on www.sportscientist.com

Our Wordpress is now ready for the iPhone. We updated the blog to the latest version and now we are able to post new items over our phones!

If you find anything not working after this update please let us know.

If you are an lucky owner of an iPhone and you have a wordpress blog you can install this Software using the application-store. Simply search for wordpress in the store - this application is for free!

Obwohl Meike bei weitem kein optimales Rennen gelang, wie sie selbst meint, so ist sie doch hoch zufrieden mit ihrem ersten Start beim Ironman Hawaii 2008. Die Lavafelder und der Wind auf dem Rad machten ihr schwer zu schaffen. Dennoch ist sie entspannt, gelöst und sehr zufirieden. Herwig hat mit ihr kurz gesprochen. Sie kommt im nächsten Jahr – Quali vorausgesetzt – trotz aller durchgemachten Qualen wieder.